Many voted in 2008 with the desire to see racism and racists humiliated by having a qualified black man elected president.
We had a black bear on the 'Hunger Games' set, and that was a little scary.
Finding the voice of a character, no matter who it is - from Black Widow to Han Solo - is the first and most important hurdle for me to cross in any work of fiction.
I'm a student of Ice Cube and Scarface, which means the stuff I rap about is not radio-friendly, and it's very opinionated. and it's very much from the perspective of a black man in America, and our opinion ain't always popular when we have a political opinion.
If any person - white, black, brown or yellow - objects to having a police officer potentially ask them for their ID, it makes me wonder what that person is trying to hide.
It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.
If black people use their resources properly, they can become as competitive as any group in society - take control of our neighborhoods, our businesses, our schools, including our teachers. The only thing keeping black people from doing it is this idiotic idea about integration, about being racially balanced.
When people think of the South Side of Chicago, they don't think about where I'm from. It was sort of a pocket: this idyllic community of black people who took care of each other, knew each other, spent time with each other.
When a black person kills a black person, the media ignores it completely.
Illinois has less than a 12 percent black population and I won with 55 percent of the vote.
My interest as an artist is to illuminate the lives of black folks. I definitely am focused on films that illustrate all that we are and all our nuance and all our complicated beauty and mess, and when you're telling those stories, you gotta have black actors.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been.
I don't go, like, 'Hmm, I'm now going to create something for the black community.' I just feel this compelling urge. I just feel myself drawn to stories that I feel have a potency and immediacy.
Anger in the black community towards Republicans is established and immutable.
There's a generation of children who don't like black and white movies. There's a level of impatience or intolerance now.
When I first started in Formula 1, I tried to ignore the fact I was the first black guy ever to race in the sport. But, as I've got older, I've really started to appreciate the implications.
When I first read the script to 'Black Hawk Down,' I didn't think it was the greatest thing in the world - far from it. But I thought the script at least raised some very important questions that are missing from the final product.
What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.
If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.
As a society, we're failing. In so many ways. Such high incarceration rates of underrepresented minorities ultimately means we're missing out on great potential from black and Latino communities. Yes, there's immense talent brewing even within the most impoverished neighborhoods. Talent is universal, but opportunity is not.
